The Talmud may be said to be reproduced in the pages of the famous Moses Ben Maimon, among whose voluminous works are fourteen books containing eighty-nine treatises of the Mishna Hathora, or Lex Secunda; a work that has led to the application to its author of the title of the Second Moses. The literary style of Maimonides is such as to render the study of his works far less repulsive than that of the earlier rabbins. But the authoritative tone in which he speaks, his contempt of the usual deference paid to authority, and the unmistakeable errors that may be detected in some of his most positive assertions, tend to deter serious scholars from implicitly following so self-asserting a guide. Maimonides was a native of Cordova. He travelled into Burgundy in search of a copy of the Law. Among his works the More Nevochim, or Doctor Perplexorum, the Yad Chazekah, or Strong Hand, and the treatise on the Resurrection, may be cited as the most noted. He travelled into Egypt in 1177, and wrote his tract on the Resurrection in 1186. His nobly worded creed is yet canonical among the people of his faith. He died, at the age of 73, in A.D. 1204.

The title of the Novum Testamentum ex Talmude illustratum, by Meuschen, is such as to warrant an eager search for this rare book. But the student will be disappointed in its perusal. It is devoid of literary merit or philosophic grasp, although not deficient in erudition. The original plan appears to have been soon abandoned by the author; as the illustrations of the genealogy contained in the first Gospel, from the idlest and least readable portions of the Ghemara, occupy nearly half the work. The details involved in this illustration may be well described by the text which speaks of the filthy dreamers' who defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dig'nities.' Any attempt to illustrate the infancy of Christianity from the ethics and opinions of the people who were the first Christians will be sought for in vain in Meuschen.

It has proved a grateful and not unrewarded task to wander through the mazes of the Talmud, and to cull flowers yet sparkling with the very dew of Eden. Figures in shining garments haunt its recesses. Prayers of deep devotion, sublime confidence, and noble benediction, echo in its ancient tongue. Sentiments of lofty courage, of high resolve, of infantile tenderness, of far-seeing prudence, fall from the lips of venerable sages. Fairy tales, for Sunday evenings' recital, go back to early days when there were giants in the land; or those, yet earlier, when, as Josephus tells us, man had a common language with the animals. Mr. Darwin might write a new book illus

VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. CCLXXXI.

D

trative of a prehistoric common ancestry, from the fables of Syria, India, and Greece, that tell of animal wisdom. From the glorious liturgy of the Temple, Rome and her daughters have stolen almost all that is sublime in their own, with the one exception of the Hymn of St. Ambrose, itself formed on a Jewish model. Page after page might be filled with such language and such thought as does not flow from modern pens. Yet the possessor of these inviting spoils would know but little of the real character of the Talmud.

These

No less practicable would it be to stray with an opposite intention, and to extract venom, instead of honey, from the flowers that seem to spring up in self-sown profusion. Fierce, intolerant, vindictive hatred for mankind, with small exception -confined in some cases to the singular number; idle subtlety, frittering away at once the energy of the human intellect and the dignity of the divine law; pride and self-conceit amounting to insanity; adulation that hails a man covered with the rags of a beggar as Saint, and Prince, and King; indelicacy pushed to a grossness that renders what it calls virtue more hateful than the vice of more modest people; all these might be strung together in one black Paternoster, and yet they would give no more just an idea of the Talmud than would the chaplets of its lovelier flowers. For both are there, and more. folio volumes comprise the intellectual life of a gifted people for the period of 800 years-a self-tormenting, mournful, misdirected life. But it is a life needful to be understood by all those who would really know what Christianity was in her cradle, and would thus discern both what that Faith historically is, and how it has gradually assumed its present form-If form,' indeed, that might be called which form has none.' Little cause have we to wonder that the Jew, as he glances from the triple tiara that claims to crown and dominate Christendom, to the rags of conventional and only nominal Christianity still retained by the disciples of masters whom we need not name (in Germany, in France, and in England), should yet cling to the linen, pure and white, of the priesthood consecrated at the Exode of the children of Israel.

The Talmud may compete with the Constitutions' of Loyola for the right to be considered the most irresistible organ ever forged for the subjugation of the human will. It stands quite alone, its age and origin considered, as a means of perpetuating a definite system of religious bondage. By the 'Constitutions,' while the education of the young is committed as far as possible to the subtle manipulation of the Order of Jesus, the decisive appeal to the obedience of the neophyte is

made, once and for all, at a fixed opportunity. When made as directed by the founder, it is said never to have been known to fail. But the Talmud not only awaits the infant at birth, and regulates every incident of that event (even to the names of the angels that are to be inscribed on the door, and the words on the four corners of the apartment), but anticipates each circumstance from the earliest moment of probability. In every relation of life, in every action, in every conceivable circumstance-for food, dress, habit, language, devotion, relaxation-it prescribes almost every word to be uttered, and almost every thought to be conceived. Its rule is minute, omnipresent, inflexible. Its severity is never relaxed. To borrow an illustration from the foundry; the Jewish mind, subjected while in a fusible state to this iron mould, has been at once chilled and case-hardened by its pressure.

The Talmud, or Doctrine, contains, according to the Jewish creed, in the first place, the actual words of the oral law, delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai with, and in explanation of, the Mikra, or written law, contained in the Pentateuch. The Constitutions of Mount Sinai,' handed down by an unbroken succession of high priests and elders, were only fully committed to writing when the persecution of the people had become such as to raise a fear of their being otherwise forgotten. To this, all whatsoever,' the Scribes and Pharisees, who sit in Moses' seat, bid you observe,' which Christ enjoined His hearers to observe and do,' is added an enor mous mass of comment, illustration, explanation, discussion, and argument, of which it is difficult to form an idea. The text is called the Mishna, Deuterosis, or Second Law. The comment, under the general name of Ghemara, or comple ment, comprises Halaca, or rabbinical logic; the Agada, which may be compared to the rhetoric or poetical and imagi native part of the Hebrew philosophy; and the Cabbala, which contains that transcendental spiritual philosophy, which is supposed to be the highest form of human thought, together with a species of magic. The Cabbala makes use of four different alphabets. The figurative Cabbala attaches a hieroglyphical value to the forms of letters, and is derived from an Egyptian source. The speculative Cabbala considers the numeric value of the letters which compose the words of the sacred text, the words of which each word contains the initials, and the anagrams of each word. The practical Cabbala teaches the construction of talismans; and the dogmatic Cabbala tells

Matt. xxiii. 2.

of the creation of the world, the orders of the heavenly hierarchy, the power of evil spirits, the thirty-two ways of wisdom, the fifty gates of prudence, the sacred and ineffable Name.

It is stated by the rabbins that it takes a study of from five to ten hours per day for seven years to attain a preliminary knowledge of the Talmud. The difficulty is not diminished by the existence of two distinct codes, or versions, known as the Talmud of Jerusalem and that of Babylon, in which the Mishna is the same (although some of the treatises are now to be found only in the one version); but the Ghemara is entirely different. There are also supplementary works of authority equal to the Mishna.

The Talmud is divided into six orders; which relate to agriculture, festivals, women, damages, holy things, and purifications. In these six orders, the Talmud of Babylon includes 68 tracts, divided into 617 sections; 26 of these tracts are without Ghemara. The present Hebrew editions of the Talmud of Jerusalem contain only the first four orders, and the tractNidda' of the sixth; although, according to Maimonides, they contained in his time five entire orders.

The first order of the Talmud is the SEDER ZERAIM, containing laws relating to seeds. It opens, however, with the important treatise Beracoth, or Benedictions. This tract has been translated into French, including the Ghemara, by the Abbé Chiarini, as before mentioned. It has also been translated, as regards the Mishna alone, into English, together with seventeen other treatises, by the Rev. O. A. Da Sola and Rev. M. J. Raphall, and published, in a second edition, in London in 1845. We may remark in passing that the literary workmanship of this translation is slovenly. No index, or even table of contents, is to be found in the volume. There are blunders in most of the numbers prefixed to the tracts. The text is full of interpolations. They are, indeed, placed between brackets, but of their value it is impossible to judge in the absence of the Ghemara. The translation is, in places, more than questionable, and the evident aim of the entire work is to present Judaism in a light as consistent with modern opinion as possible.

The second treatise of the SEDER ZERAIM is entitled Peah, and relates to the rights of the poor with reference to the soil of the Holy Land and its produce, and to the corner of the field to be left for them according to the injunctions in the Pentateuch.

The third treatise, Demai, contains laws relating to the tithe of agricultural produce, and to the heave offering. The fourth,

Kilaim, has been translated by Messrs. Da Sola and Raphall. It relates to the mixtures of different species forbidden by the Law: whether in the breeding and the harnessing of cattle, the weaving of textile fabrics, or the sowing of the ground. Shebiith, the fifth treatise, treats of the Sabbatic year, the unbroken revolution of which, from the very date of the Exodus, forms the master key to the chronology of the historic and prophetic books of Scripture. Tract VI., Teroomoth, relates to the heave offering. Tracts VII. and VIII., entitled Maaseroth and Maasa Sheni, contain the laws which regulate the first and the second tithes. Shalah, No. IX., contains laws relating to the offering of a cake of the first dough, as enjoined in Numbers xv. 20. Orlah, No. X., relates to the fruit of newly-planted trees, which must not be eaten during the first three years, and which is consecrated on the fourth. Lastly, Bikurim, No. XI., contains laws relating to the first fruits. It is to be regretted that the fact that these laws are considered as in abeyance while the Jews are out of Palestine, has been allowed to cause the neglect of their translation.

SEDER MOED, or the Order of Festivals, is the second division of the Talmud, and consists of twelve tracts or treatises. Of these the first, Sabboth, relates to the due observance of the Sabbath Day. It contains twenty chapters, and is one of those translated into English. Erubin, or Commixtures, is the second tract of the order, and defines those various combinations of reshuth,' domiciles, or limits, by means of which the extreme severity of the law of Sabbatic rest were to some extent conventionally alleviated. Pesachim, or Pasque, is No. III., and is a treatise of extreme importance and interest, containing the laws for the observance of the Paschal festival, some of which are peculiar to Palestine, while others are of general obligation. The value of this treatise to the critical student of the New Testament is extreme. It contains ten chapters, divided into eighty-eight Mischnaioth or sections. The fourth treatise is entitled Yomah, and treats of the rites proper to the tenth day of the month Ethanim, or Tisri, the day of Reconciliation, the most solemn festival of the Jewish year. Of this highly valuable tract only the eighth chapter is to be found in the English translation, for the alleged reason that the first seven relate exclusively to the service of the Temple. A Latin translation of this treatise, by Ugolin, with the Tosaphta, or comment of Rabbi Chija, a work held to be of equal authority with the Mishna itself, forms the portion of the General Catalogue of the British Museum Library devoted to the Latin versions of the Talmud. The eight chapters contain